My self-publishing journey in 2025: a year in review

I’ve decided to start the year 2026 with a look back at the self-publishing work I completed in 2025. I spent much of my spare time over the past year working on a single RPG supplement, which I self-published on a shoestring budget with little in the way of marketing or promotion towards the end of the year.

Specifically, I published the Forgotten Realms Travel Guide: Faerûn, Kara-Tur, and Zakhara, a 700-page campaign setting supplement that expands upon existing Forgotten Realms material. (You can visit this other thread for a more detailed product description.)

The travel guide is my longest published work to date. Previously, I self-published twenty or so short supplements providing new character options for the first edition of the Pathfinder RPG. (Those titles were published years ago on drivethrurpg.com. None are currently available.)

The travel guide I finished in 2025 was a different project in many ways. Most importantly, the travel guide required extensive research and development over the course of multiple years. In contrast, I was able to release my previous titles at a consistent rate of one per month for almost two years.

According to conventional wisdom, all things being equal, a series of twenty short RPG products will sell better than a single large RPG product. Knowing this, creating my 700-page travel guide was a bit of a risk. Would it have been better to just publish another twenty small PDFs?

Of my twenty shorter titles, most ended up approaching or surpassing the copper bestseller mark on drivethrurpg.com. Some fell a bit short. Three were silver bestsellers instead. Had each title in the series hit the average number of sales, all would have been copper bestsellers, if just barely.

In comparison, after just under two months of sales, the travel guide I published at the end of 2025 has sold a few units short of the copper bestseller mark. If a handful of sales trickle in over time, the travel guide should hit that benchmark. So it’s selling about as well as any of my previous, shorter titles.

Overall, I spent less time and effort creating the twenty short titles than I did creating the 700-page travel guide, and the combined price of the twenty shorter titles was slightly higher than the price of the longer title. This supports the conventional wisdom that shorter titles are more profitable.

On the other hand, I spent less time and effort marketing the travel guide. (I had no marketing campaign, no social media presence, and no product reviews in place at the time of release.) I’m also convinced the travel guide is a better product overall, and I learned a fair amount while working on it.

I’ll expand upon that last point in a future post, as this post is running longer than expected.

I'm very curious about your PF1 products, now. I hope you don't mind my asking why they're no longer available?

Alzrius said:

I'm very curious about your PF1 products, now. I hope you don't mind my asking why they're no longer available?

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I retired my PF1 back catalogue for branding purposes. My old titles didn't reflect the style I'm using in my latest product, and I wasn't excited about supporting two product lines with competing aesthetics. I decided to gradually prune my older titles and replace them with a few newer ones that have more in common with my latest project.

Returning to the point I raised at the end of the original post, I learned a fair amount while working on the Forgotten Realms Travel Guide.

Some of the things I learned were technical in nature. I’d never attempted to create regional maps for publication before, and I was now creating a product which required well over 100 of them. That gave me a chance to try out some graphics programs I wouldn’t have otherwise used. (I ended up creating my maps in GIMP, with a few touch-ups done in Inkscape. If I were to do it all over again, I’d probably spend more time learning Inkscape to make better use of vector graphics.)

I also learned that creating a 700-page document using outdated hardware and software is surprisingly inefficient. My ancient machine often lagged a bit when I manipulated the full file. That didn’t seem like a big deal in the moment, but looking back on it, a few seconds of lag here and there probably added up to dozens of wasted hours in total. If I made my living publishing long, graphics-intensive books, I would definitely invest in a newer machine with up-to-date software.

On a less technical note, I learned one must be flexible when working on a project with a long lead time. WotC hadn’t announced their latest Forgotten Realms campaign guides when I started work on my travel guide. I had originally planned for my book to serve as a stand-alone campaign guide. When WotC announced they were already covering that ground, I had to quickly pivot, converting my project into a supplement supporting WotC’s latest products instead of one competing against them.

Long-term planning really helped me here. When I started my travel guide in my spare time, I was aware it would take years to complete the project. I also knew WotC could publish books much faster than I could, and it occurred to me they might beat me to the punch with new Forgotten Realms material. With that in mind, I brainstormed three or four ways I might repurpose the work I was doing if my initial plan didn’t pan out. That proved prescient on my part.

I’m proving less prescient when gauging how long it takes to write posts for this thread. I’ll return with some additional thoughts in a later post.

In case there's someone reading this thread who's thinking about getting into writing for the first time, I’d like to echo some classic advice that many other authors have mentioned online and elsewhere:

Firstly, set aside time to write every day, and consistently write during that time. I’d have never finished my Forgotten Realms Travel Guide if I’d treated the project as something to do when I was bored. I prioritized my writing as if it was a part-time job, and I planned my life accordingly. Doing so sometimes meant missing out on social activities that might interfere with my writing. Thankfully, my friends and loved ones were supportive of my busy schedule.

Secondly, find and engage with a community who’d be interested in what you’re writing. I’d recommend not showing up just to promote your writing; engage with the community because you enjoy interacting with its members, regardless. If they also show an interest in your project, all the better. One obvious way to find such a community is through social media. As someone who doesn’t use social media, I interact with folks through forums, instead. Whatever your preferred platform, spend a bit of your day talking to (and more importantly, listening to) people who share your interests.

Epic Meepo said:

Firstly, set aside time to write every day, and consistently write during that time. I’d have never finished my Forgotten Realms Travel Guide if I’d treated the project as something to do when I was bored. I prioritized my writing as if it was a part-time job, and I planned my life accordingly. Doing so sometimes meant missing out on social activities that might interfere with my writing. Thankfully, my friends and loved ones were supportive of my busy schedule.

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As a professional writer, I think this is really important.

Think of yourself as a craftsperson, not an artist. A craftsperson doesn't lay on the couch, waiting for inspiration to strike: They get up and make a table, because their job is making tables, not laying on couches.

That daily experience of making tables will quickly mean you're turning out really good ones as well.